By Sherry Robinson
All She Wrote

A century ago, shoppers bought their Christmas cards from the local printer. A little bottled cheer required a visit to the local bootlegger because Prohibition was still in force. And a thoughtful gift was radio batteries.

“You would be surprised if you knew how many people are giving radio batteries this Christmas,” said an ad in the Albuquerque Journal. “Some are people whose friends have entertained them with their radio sets.”

By 1924 radio set had been around for a few years, but they were still a novelty. Basically a wooden box with dials and headphones, they were so pricey that few people could afford one. Deming Ice & Electric Co. offered radio sets for $85 to $200, comparable to a major appliance. Then there were the added costs of tubes and batteries.

So those who had a radio set invited friends and neighbors to gather around the device for an evening’s entertainment.

What could they hear? KOB, “the voice of the great Southwest,” was broadcasting from the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now NMSU.

In 1922 Ralph Goddard, dean of engineering, got a license for the radio station he and his students built. It was New Mexico’s first radio station and one of few in the West. With 10,000 watts of power, KOB could be heard statewide. Goddard broadcast dramas, farm shows, news and live music. He personally provided play-by-play coverage of an Aggie football game in 1922, the first such broadcast west of the Mississippi.

Radio sets became more affordable after the federal government published instructions on how to build one. And Goddard, in early 1924, circulated “instructions on how to build a receiving set which is suitable to the needs of ranchmen and others living in isolated places,” wrote the Alamagordo Daily News. Cost: $20.

Newspaper columns offered tips to improve operations, abetting the endless tinkering needed to reduce static and achieve better reception.

In 1924 a dance at the Golf Club in Alamogordo featured two radio sets so that attendees could hear election returns, wrote the Alamogordo Daily News. And some Carlsbad residents heard a speech by President Calvin Coolidge. The Carlsbad Current Argus opined that December: “It may be that the radio set is going to take the place of the old-time fireside as a local center of family life.”

While the radio set was just another amenity to city folks, it was life changing in the rural areas. Think about just how isolated most New Mexicans were. Roads were mostly wagon tracks with no bridges or road signs. Distances were daunting. The state wouldn’t be electrified for years (and some places still don’t have electricity). For people with addresses in the mountains, plains and desert, being cut off from the world was reality.

A battery-operated radio set changed everything. Suddenly, New Mexico’s farmers, ranchers, miners, loggers and reservation dwellers could hear breaking news and weather reports. They could hear the voice of the president. They were humming the latest tunes.

In 1923 the Gallup Independent reported that Charles Berger bought “a radio outfit” for his farm near McGaffey. “Now the wilds of the Zuni Mountains are about to be filled with the operatic and scientific wonders of the world,” the newspaper observed.

Still, in the 1920s not many radio sets were in use – just one in ten homes had a radio set, and rural use was half that amount – but the curve was bending ever upward. In December 1924 manufacturers promised radio sets with increased range and less static. And in what’s become a familiar pattern, performance improved as costs came down, until nearly everyone had one.

Radio sets broke the barriers of isolation and introduced the concept of interconnection that we’ve been chasing ever since. Today, every broadband project tells rural people, you don’t have to be isolated any more. It echoes the revolution that gave us radio.

Sherry Robinson is a longtime New Mexico reporter and editor. She has worked in Grants, Gallup, the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico Business Weekly and Albuquerque Tribune. She is the author of four books. Her columns won first place in 2024 from New Mexico Press Women.